Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2021 November 26

= November 26 =

All The King's Men Cajun song
Hi all, I can't seem to find this on any of the soundtrack listings nor online chats talking about film sampled songs, can anyone name [|this tune from the Sean Penn version of All the King's Men?] Thank you! 2600:1702:690:F7A0:81AC:B11D:D95D:E9EA (talk) 04:11, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

The Lord of the Rings & The Hobbit films - British accents
How come all the characters in both The Lord of the Rings & The Hobbit film trilogies spoke with British accents? 81.152.221.231 (talk) 20:20, 26 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Frodo doesn't. Are hobbits not (Little) People too? (But in Boromir's case, it's because Sean Bean needs his periodic dose of dying onscreen.) Clarityfiend (talk) 21:45, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
 * But I think it's mainly that (to American audiences anyway) it sounds classier, and epic fantasy is expected to sound grand. Imagine Dustin Hoffman playing a captive Merry and complaining as the Rohirrim overrun the orcs: "I'm walkin' here! I'm walkin' here!" Clarityfiend (talk) 21:51, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The BBC article Why are fantasy world accents British? states "A British accent is sufficiently exotic to transport the viewer to a different reality, argues Seitz, while still being comprehensible to a global audience." Clarityfiend (talk) 22:12, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
 * A couple of web pages which address the accents in the films - this one by a cognitive science researcher, and this board thread which includes Andrew Jack (dialect coach)'s rationale for the accents used. Whether all the actors succeeded in carrying off the assigned accents is, to my ears, open to debate. DuncanHill (talk) 22:33, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
 * And, as we all know, ancient Greeks, Romans and Egyptians all spoke with British accents. But seriously, I think one reason relates to a shorthand means of distinguishing characters' class (better than with American accents, for example). 2603:6081:1C00:1187:957:E488:47F8:5FB8 (talk) 02:21, 27 November 2021 (UTC)
 * It's a British author's fantasy epic explicitly built as British mythology and set in Britain. As mentioned above by others, UK accents are often used in fantasies, at least in part to give them a higher register and/or less recentism of speech, even if the setting for the story has nothing to do with England or even the Earth at all. But surely the most deliberately English fantasy doesn't require an explanation? Matt Deres (talk) 13:55, 27 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Samwise Gamgee loves taters, so there may have been a trans-Atlantic bridge. --Lambiam 16:56, 27 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, and Denethor savaging that tomato and the Hobbits meeting up in a corn field and smoking pipe-weed. Perhaps Tenochtitlan was the Utter West? Matt Deres (talk) 21:42, 27 November 2021 (UTC)
 * To be somewhat more serious (and I realise and  are joking), the fictional account of the LoTR and its surrounding texts specify that the universe (including the world, sun and moon), had already been drastically redesigned by Ilúvatar (the supreme deity) three times before and during the Second Age long prior to LoTR's events, including the most recent transformation of Arda (Earth) from flat to a globe, the transfiguration of the small Earth-orbiting Sun and Moon to today's heliocentric configuration, and the rearrangement of seas and continents (including one continent being removed to another dimension) to a state in which subsequent continental drift would result in today's geography.
 * In the scope of such drastic interventional changes, the growth ranges of a few plant species (which might have been imported to Middle Earth (forerunner of Eurasia) – from either Númenor (the forerunner of the Americas) or Valinor in Aman (sort-of Atlantis) which originally lay between them – before the Third Age in which the main story takes place, is a footling detail which was probably tidied up by the Valar or Maiar (analogues to Archangels and Angels) some time early in the Fourth Age (with the present day being the Sixth or Seventh).
 * However, for the benefit of some I must point out Matt Deres' error – the word "corn" in British (and certainly Tolkien's) English has always meant "any cereal crop" (most often barley or wheat, sometimes rye, occasionally other types). It has never referred to Maize or (as the early colonists dubbed it) "Indian corn" which is here referred to as "sweetcorn" or (where appropriate) "corn on the cob" [Edited to add: or "maize" when it's actually growing in a field]. As for Tobacco/Pipe-weed, Tolkien himself devoted Part 2 of LoTR's Prologue' to the question, and suggests that it probably was true Nicotiana and (according to the researches of Meriadoc Brandybuck published in his book Herblore of the Shire) that it was likely brought to Middle-earth by the men of Westernesse (Númenor). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.205.225.31 (talk) 22:23, 27 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Also tater says that the usage is found on both sides of the Atlantic. See also taters which means "cold" in London. Alansplodge (talk) 09:42, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Wiktionary says that in the US the word is baseball slang for a home run. The point is however not linguistic but botanical: potatoes are not native to the Old World and were only brought there after Europeans discovered the other "India". --Lambiam 12:52, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Except Tolkein is also not an ethnobotanist; he was not necessarily trying to (or even knew if he was or not) accurately modeling the Columbian exchange. By the early 20th century, potatoes were a staple crop in the British Isles, and had been for centuries.  He does seem to create a similar origin story for pipe-weed as for what actually happened with tobacco, but I don't know that he addresses potatoes in any meaningful way. -- Jayron 32 15:59, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * No error at all - I was referring to the maize clearly seen in the movies, which of course also included a bunch of New Zealand flora also "out of place" in prehistoric Europe. Matt Deres (talk) 15:29, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. I have up until now actively avoided seeing the movies and – as far as possible – any imagery from them, so was not aware of these horticultural and botanical cinematic infelicities. [I don't doubt that the movies are good in themselves; I just don't want their inevitably compelling visuals to displace that already formed in my own mind by the texts.] {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.205.225.31 (talk) 00:09, 29 November 2021 (UTC)